Kalashtar and the Triliths...

[Erywin]

So I have just had a new player on board for the game this Sunday and he is looking to play a Kalashtar Cleric. I have my campaign in a setting generic world, but I love the flavour and idea behind the Kalashtar. Any ideas on how to make them tie together with the Triliths?

Cheers,
E

 

[Marius Delphus]

Well...

... and not to put too fine a point on it, but this is a great honking spoiler for the campaign arc ...

[sblock]Seeing as how the trillith are spawned from the dreams of a great gold dragon, whom, they believe, they must keep entrapped in magical slumber so that they can continue to exist, and the kalashtar are themselves escapees from the realm of dreams, some kind of ages-old rivalry immediately suggests itself.[/sblock]

 

[Erywin]

Awesome, as I haven't read through much more than the first half of the first adventure, are the Triliths generally evil/good? I guess I could align the Kalashtar as allies of the dragon being entrapped. They had to flee as the Triliths were taking over the dream world and are looking for a way to free the dragon. Though, when they fled the dreamworld they lost most of their memories of the clash between Kalashtar and Triliths. Thoughts?

Cheers,
E

 

[Marius Delphus]

Still way spoiler-y!

[sblock]In general, the trillith do not have the heroes' best interests in mind. Many actively work against the heroes, and their overarching agenda is not conducive to the, how shall we say, continued existence of the physical world. Any of it.[/sblock]

 

[Erywin]

Awesome Marius, I can definitely work with that Thanks for the help! Kind of wishing some more of the players were Kalashtar now, oh well. Oh last question is, how prominent are the Triliths throughout the campaign. And are their machinations majorly thwarted by the heroes?

Cheers,
E

 

[Marius Delphus]

More spoilers than a Formula-1 track!

[sblock]They're behind a couple of major beats in the saga -- problems the heroes really need to overcome in order to bring the thing to an acceptable conclusion. There's one coming up in Adventure Four, for instance, that's essentially in control of all the important things that happen throughout the adventure until the heroes flush her/it out -- and even then, she/it might manage a partial victory. And as I insinuated last time, if the heroes don't majorly thwart their overarching goal late in the saga, the physical world ceases to exist, with all the obvious ramifications that entails.[/sblock]

 

[RangerWickett]

Actually Eric, unless you guys changed the timeline a bit, it's kinda hard for kalashtar and trillith to be 'old enemies.'

[sblock]The trillith only appeared on the scene 40 or 50 years ago (a century tops; I don't have my book with me), unless you want to change their backstory a bit.

Now, the kalashtar could be similar to characters like Kathor and Crystin, both of whom have a trillith living inside them. The trick is that the trillith are supposed to be a bit of a mystery in the series, so optimally you want a set-up that gives the PC an 'in' without giving away the secret.

Perhaps 40 years ago a group of human psions captured a trillith and trapped pieces of its essence in each of them, or they befriended a trillith who had turned against its kin, and it shared its boon with them. They became kalashtar, gaining psychic powers, and they passed down stories about the trillith to the PC without really knowing what it was that they encountered.

Alternately, you could rewrite the setting a bit and say that the trillith were always around in a dream realm, and that Trilla (the dragon) just provided them a gateway into our world. In the original idea of the setting, the trillith are like the children of Trilla, but here they might be prisoners, sucked into the physical world through Trilla's nightmares, and seeking a way back home, even if that means killing millions.
[/sblock]

But yeah, lots of ways you could go about it. In the original campaign that inspired WotBS, one of the PCs was Kathor, so I'm fully supportive of you giving one of the players a connection to the trillith.

 

[the8bitdeity]

Being a huge Eberron fan, perhaps I can give some suggestions on how to tailor things;

[sblock]
Historically Kalashtar's arch-enemies are the Quori. Beings from the realm of dreams. Now, the interesting thing is the CURRENT Quori are NOT the Quori the Kalashtar escaped from. When Dal Quor (the realm of dreams) comes into alignment with Eberron the Quori are re-created, and when Dal Quor comes out of alignment they are all destroyed (those in the plane). Thus the current Quori in Eberron seek to maintain Dal Quor's alignment for EVER to prevent their destruction. Hence the Dreaming Dark maintains control over an entire Continent.

Perhaps the trilith's realm of dreams has the same phenomenon. Perhaps some other ancient dreaming entity once spawned the trilith and the kalashtar escaped from that scenario, and therefore have that sort of rivalry.
[/sblock]

 

[Marius Delphus]

Well, I haven't worked the writing at all, I'm just brainstorming. That little detail escaped me!

[sblock]Because of the time scale involved, I had actually been thinking the present-day trillith are descendants... somehow... of the beings the kalashtar escaped, or that the trillith are, though new visitors to the physical world, not "new beings" at all but rather "old ideas given shape." That way it doesn't really matter how long they've been running around, and I'm off the hook.

"Trilla the gateway" was much like what I had in mind, tossing in a good old fashioned dose of envy (kalashtar are real in a way the trillith can never be!) and stirring for a millennium or three.[/sblock]
Overall, though, I figured I'd let the OP work out the nitty-gritty details.

@the8bitdeity: Sounds like that could be made to work, too!

 

[RangerWickett]

Hm. Actually, that raises an obscure point to the setting (at least the one I had in my head, circa 3.5):

[sblock]
In adventure 12, the PCs come across a trillith-like spirit called Time, which guards the Aquiline Heart. It takes the form of a ghostly dragon, and in my head I always thought that the creature was basically a trillith created by the Flamebringer Dragon.

Just as Trilla got weird psychic powers after having infernal and celestial energy poured into her, so too could the primordial fire spirit have gotten powers after consuming the flesh of the ancient air spirit, the Stormchaser Eagle. If you read adventure 10 of the 3.5 version, you might have noted that

A) Silesh-el-Mavisha, the Tidereaver, will answer queries;
B) Thuuga-el-Shembul, the Worldshaper, will too; but
C) Jhial-el-Avilona, the Stormchaser is dead except for her heart; and
D) Khor-el-Jiese, the Flamebringer will not respond to the heroes’ entreaties.

I always imagined (but never bothered to put into the saga) that Jiese ate the heart, realized he was being tempted by too much power, and in a brief moment of morality conjured a guardian to defend the Heart. Then he fled -- not to the Underdark like Trilla, but to another plane. Perhaps the Elemental Plane of Fire/Elemental Chaos. Perhaps one of the Nine Hells/Astral Dominions.

Maybe kalashtar were primitive people who witnessed the dragon's flight from this world, who allied with or defeated nightmare being spawned by the primordial spirit before he gained control of his power.

Perhaps a kalashtar PC in adventure 3 might sense an inexplicable connection to something beyond the fire seal in the steam tunnels beneath Seaquen.

(If I had been more closely involved with adventure 11 originally, in order to provide an avenue for post-campaign epic-level play, I probably wouldn't have put a demon lord down there, but rather the lair of Khor-el-Jiese.)[/sblock]